


Creative Accounting

by BlueIris4



Series: White Collar Crime [1]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 07:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4555524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueIris4/pseuds/BlueIris4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robbie can’t bear to see someone in pain.  Not even his CS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creative Accounting

This is how it begins.

Robbie tries to use the new expenses software, and ends up crashing the system. He’s still swearing (and James, the bastard, is still laughing) when the summons comes from Innocent. James stops laughing; Robbie stops swearing; they stare at each other in consternation. Innocent has been in a black mood for coming on two months, and the last week has been so bad DCs all over the station have been ducking for cover. Julie actually hid out in their office on Tuesday. This is going to be mighty unpleasant.

Of course, Robbie isn’t just going to lie down and take it. He’s got a few choice remarks of his own he’d like to make to their CS. He’d been outspoken at the time about the dubious wisdom of implementing a station-wide software upgrade in the middle of a complicated investigation, and now he feels vindicated.  

“Wish me luck, lad.”

James bites his lip.

“Go easy on her today, sir,” he says quietly, looking mighty uncomfortable. “Word around the nick is she’s filed for divorce.”

Robbie stops, turns and stares.

“How do you know _that_?”

James gives him a wry smile and shrugs. “First rule of undercover work, sir. Never compromise your sources.”

Robbie arches an eyebrow and thinks yet again that even after all these years James Hathaway is a sodding mystery to him. It’s nothing short of miraculous the way the lad’s the first to know as soon as so much as a mouse sneezes in the station canteen. Not that Robbie is complaining, mind – it’s dead useful knowing who won’t be using up their entire budget for the quarter, or who’s looking to offload a DC. There are definite perks to having the best-connected sergeant in the nick. But still. The mind boggles.

“Right,” he says after a moment. “Good to know.”

Although when he gets in there, he’s not sure that it is. He’s barely closed the door behind him when she’s off about expense reports and staying on top of technology and the headaches he’s caused for accounting. Any other day he’d be meeting her toe to toe, quick to give her the fight she so obviously wants. But now he looks at her, and remembers what James just told him, and he can’t help noticing how tired she looks. Her eyes are ringed blue-black, and there are tiny lines of stress around the corners of her mouth that Robbie is sure weren’t there a few months ago. She looks miserable.

So when her rant winds up, he doesn’t have the heart to say anything but, “Yes, Ma’am. I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

She stares at him. Her lips actually part in surprise.

Then her eyes narrow.

“You know,” she says flatly.

He can’t say yes. He can’t tell her that the whole nick’s been gossiping about the state of her marriage for months. But he can’t lie to her either.

“Ma’am,” he says uneasily, hoping she’ll take it as a question and not a confirmation. She’s too bloody clever for that, of course.

She frowns, and those little lines around her lips grow just a bit deeper. Robbie feels the most peculiar urge to reach out and smooth them with his thumb. He almost says, “Ah, lass, don’t make that face,” before remembering that Jean Innocent is not his wife or his daughter or anyone in fact except his _boss_.

“I suppose no one’s surprised,” she says tightly. Robbie can see her white knuckles clenching and unclenching around the edge of the desk. “No one except me,” she adds with a brittle sort of laugh.

Robbie doesn’t know what to say. Even years of managing James Emotional Minefield Hathaway haven’t prepared him for this.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he says finally.

She meets his eyes for a moment, and he wishes she was the type of woman you could wrap up in a long bear-hug. She looks like she needs it. But she isn’t, and he can’t, and he’s never felt so helpless.

She shudders, just once, beneath his gaze, and then he can actually see the physical effort she makes to pull herself together. She sits up a bit straighter, consciously relaxes her hands and forces her features to smooth over into that hard professional mask. It’s a masterful performance, and it breaks Robbie’s heart to watch.

“Yes,” she says, “Yes, well. Tech’s rebooting the system now. See that these expense reports are done again. Correctly, this time.”

That’ll be hours of work – he’ll be at his desk til bloody midnight if he has to start them over from scratch. But he can’t seem to summon his usual antagonism. Not now that he's caught a glimpse of the tired and drawn woman underneath all that astringent professionalism.  He wishes there was something he could say or do to help, but nothing comes to mind.

Well, she's told him what to do, hasn't she.  Expense reports.  He can do those, even if right now he wishes the entire Accounting department at the bottom of the Adriatic.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he says and tries to sound enthusiastic about hours of costing. It’s a doomed attempt of course, but it must amuse her.  Her lips quirk into a rueful smile, and she says, “Get that Sergeant of yours onto them,” in what Robbie recognises is meant to be a vague apology. “Put that Cambridge brain to work.”

Robbie summons up a wry smile from somewhere, and thinks James may come to regret asking Robbie to go easy.

* * *

Robbie doesn’t know how the lad does it, but James talks Gurdip into giving them a second tutorial on the new accounting software, and then even persuades him to give them an hour of data entry. Robbie thinks, and not for the first time, that Jean Innocent did him a better turn than either of them knew when she gave him James. The lad’s a bloody marvel.

Between the three of them, they manage to get the revised expense reports submitted to accounting and they land confirmation of receipt on Innocent’s desk at six on the dot.

She gives them a thin-lipped smile that’s as much thanks as they’re going to get today.

“Pint, sir?” James suggests as they’re leaving her office. Robbie’s about to agree when a sudden impulse takes him. He turns around and says, “Join us, Ma’am?”

Her eyes widen. Beside him, James has gone very still.

Robbie realises too late that he’s gone about this all wrong, of course. CS Innocent doesn’t socialize with her officers out of work, except on formal occasions, and she certainly doesn’t park herself in the White Horse for a half of stout. They’ve never invited her to join them before, and he can see from her rapidly forming scowl that she thinks it’s a pity invite, and that he’s about to find out just how little she thinks of the gesture. Quite possibly in the kind of blue language that would put a soldier to shame. Innocent can rival Hathaway for daring invective when she’s in a mood.

He has to think, and fast.

“Time for Sergeant Hathaway’s performance review,” he says now. “Bit more friendly talking it through over a pint.”

James elbows him, and Robbie wonders if he’s just dug himself into a hole so deep with one or both of them that he’ll only be able to atone for it by resigning. Or doing their paperwork. Every day for the next six months.

“I think that would be a bit unprofessional,” she says, with a reproving frown of her eyebrows.  But then her scowl cracks and she blinks at them with a kind of honest bewilderment that tugs at Robbie’s heartstrings.  "However, if you're saying you have some concerns to table _off the record_ , as your commanding officer, I am of course obliged to listen."

She gives Robbie a meaningful look that he can't make head nor tails of, and it falls to James to pick up the conversational ball.  "That's right, Ma'am.  Nothing formal to discuss.  All off the record."

He doesn't sound happy about it either.  Perhaps that's not so surprising.  Can't be much joy spending the evening not just with your governor, but with your governor's governor as well. 

Innocent reaches for her handbag as if she doesn't know herself why she's letting them talk her into this nonsense, and murmurs, "Well, I must say, I'll be very interested to hear Sergeant Hathaway's performance appraisal of _you_ , Lewis. I've always said we don't give junior officers enough input. We have to encourage everyone to be _key stakeholders_ in police procedure."

There’s a glint of a positively sharklike smile, and James shifts uneasily beside him, stepping a bit closer in that protective way he has. There’s no need for the lad to get so defensive, she’s only joking. He's almost certain. Never can tell with Innocent.

“Right, then,” Robbie says, and thinks again that he's gone about this arse over tit, and it was probably always a non-starter.  He's just bought them all a bloody uncomfortable evening down the pub.  But what's done is done and all that. He’s about to suggest the White Horse, and remembers just in time that that’s a popular spot for officers on a Thursday night. The last thing Innocent needs right now is to spend the evening wondering who’s talking about her and what they’re saying. That could turn an uncomfortable evening into something right painful for everyone concerned.  “We were thinking the Trout, Ma’am,” he suggests, and treads heavily on James’s foot before the lad can say something to the contrary.

“Alright," she says, and quirks an eyebrow in that disconcerting way she has.  Robbie thinks, and not for the first time, that she can read every one of his unspoken thoughts. "I’ll meet you there.”

She watches them leave with an inscrutable expression to rival James’s. Robbie doesn’t have a clue what either of them are thinking.

* * *

“What’s bitten you?” Robbie says when they’ve gone half the drive in silence. “I know it’s not much fun having a drink with your boss, but you’ve got to admit, she looks like she needs it.”

He doesn’t say he’s surprised at James’ lack of sympathy, though he damn well is. He’d have thought James would have been quickest of any one to reach out to their CS in her time of need.

“I think that she’s not your responsibility, sir,” James says quietly, staring straight ahead at the road. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, the only outward sign of inward perturbation.

"I didn't say she was," Robbie says, and wonders why he's on the defensive, with _James_ of all people.  “It's just a drink.”

They pull up at the lights and James skewers him with a look.

“She’s not a stray cat, Robbie,” he says quietly. It’s the use of his first name more than anything that warns Robbie he’s in deadly earnest. “You can’t take her in and make it better.”

“I know.”

But he doesn’t, not really. He doesn’t have a clue what James is getting at. Judging by the frustrated sigh he exhales as the light goes green, James knows it.

* * *

They’re halfway through their first pint when she joins them. James is out of his seat straight away, eager to buy her a drink and even more eager (Robbie suspects) to escape the awkward first greetings.

“So this is how you and Hathaway spend your evenings,” she says, settling down on the bench and looking out over the river. “You’re quite the old lush, aren’t you.”

For a moment he almost takes offence. Jean Innocent has a way of putting his back up – always has, from the day they first met. He thinks she feels the same about him more often than not.

But then he does what James has suggested in the past, on the cases when Innocent is at her most infuriating and Robbie at his most short-tempered. He tries to imagine the same words coming from Laura, and they make him chuckle instead of scowl.

“Hathaway keeps me on the straight and narrow,” he tells her.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. Her amusement is unmistakeable. “Does he,” she says. “I’ll bet that’s hard work. I should give him a pay rise.”

His throat goes hot. If _that_ had come from Laura, he’d swear she was flirting with him.

Which just goes to show that even Cambridge graduates don’t know everything. He gives up on the whole idea of pretending she’s someone else – someone he's comfortable with and understands and all that rot – and settles for dealing with the prickly, demanding woman she is.

“We all need someone to keep us out of trouble,” he says, and then kicks himself for saying something so insensitive. Kicks himself again when she mutters darkly, “Yes, well, lucky those who can find it.”

He considers and discards various responses, before settling on something that lacks elegance but at least can’t be mistaken for anything other than genuine good will.

“Are you alright, Ma’am?”

She looks at him, then, really looks at him, and her lips quirk into a smile that somehow isn't very smiley.      

“You could try calling me Jean. We’ve only known each other for going on five years.”

 _Jean_. Christ, he’s not sure he can.

“Are you alright, Jean?” he says, testing the name carefully on his tongue. It sounds less strange than he might have expected.

She looks away again, stares out at the river although Robbie doesn’t think she really sees it.

“I don’t know,” she says, as precisely as if she’s picking up each word with chopsticks. “I –”

She breaks off. James has returned, triumphantly bearing a G&T and muttering dire imprecations about the hen party inside.

Jean gives him one brief, anxious look and Robbie realises that whatever she had or hadn’t been going to say, the subject is now closed. She won’t open up in front of Hathaway. Well, fair enough. James is still a lad, really, and surprisingly naïve for all of his thirty-six years. He wouldn’t understand how much can go wrong between a man and a woman. He hasn’t seen enough go right yet.

It turns into a surprisingly enjoyable evening. James is on top form – foolish to imagine he wouldn’t put his best foot forward when it came to it – and if his sergeant’s mock-performance review of his governor cuts a little close to the bone at times, well, it makes Jean smile and that’s the aim of the evening. Robbie can be a good sport. Conversation leads on to the mysteries of the Abbot case – a double murder and still no leads – and she’s her usual insightful self.  She seems a bit less demanding away from the station.  All in all, Robbie’s surprised by how much he enjoys himself.  

But as the evening trips on, she grows quieter and more serious. He and James cut off after a pint each, and Jean after her second G&T, but still she’s more vague and disconnected than Robbie has ever seen her when they stand up to leave.

He and James exchange looks, and then Robbie reaches out and takes hold of her keys.

“I’ll take you home,” he says quietly. She nods slowly, accepting that through a fog of gin and misery. She doesn’t object, although for a minute it looks like James might. His sergeant gives him a warning look as they part ways and Robbie remembers, _she’s not your responsibility_. But he’s not sure she isn’t.  

* * *

The drive is silent but not uncomfortable. Robbie stares at the road and Jean stares out the window at the soft golden streetlights that wash Oxford in early evening warmth.  At one point, as they pass a huge redbrick Victorian townhouse, she tenses and says, “Andrew’s parents lived there. They never liked me, you know. They didn’t approve of career women.”

She trails off into reflective silence again, and he doesn’t think she actually expects a response. That’s good, because he has no idea what to say.

Robbie pulls up in front of the imposing Park Town terrace and stares at the dark windows. It must have been bad enough rattling around in a big old place like this when her son had been at home. Now she must feel like she’s living in a museum with all those empty rooms.

He undoes his seatbelt and goes around to open her door. Old-fashioned, maybe, but no one can say Robbie Lewis doesn’t have manners.

She steps out of the car, places a hand on his arm, murmurs, “Do you want to come in for tea?”

He hesitates. He remembers again James saying _she’s not a stray cat_ and thinks – well, it’s definitely not a good idea – on the other hand –

“Andrew’s not here,” she says. “Turns out he had everything packed up and a new place leased before he served me the papers.”

Her voice resounds with an impotent, humiliated anger and something deep inside Robbie cracks wide open. He doesn’t understand how she didn’t see it coming – she’s the cleverest copper he knows, and the best at reading people – but it’s clear she’s been completely blindsided. And Robbie can’t bear to see someone hurting. Never could.

“I could do with a cuppa.”

Her hand clenches briefly around his forearm, and then she’s striding away, reaching into her handbag for the keys, and looking nearly as off-balance as Robbie feels.

It’s tea, he reminds himself. They’re just having tea. She could do with the company, and it’s not like Robbie has anyone waiting for him at home.

They don’t have tea.

They’ve no sooner slammed the front door than she’s in his arms, and Robbie’s the one who’s blindsided by this turn of events.

“Should I put the kettle on?” he says when they come up for air, and he thinks _what?_ and _tonight?_ and _god she can kiss_.

“Later,” she murmurs in a low throaty voice, and reaches for him again.

Somehow they’re stumbling up the stairs and she’s got his tie off, he’s got his hand under her blouse, and this is all happening so fast Robbie can’t think straight.

He’s never looked at her this way before. He’s looking now. And what he sees makes him think, _Bloody hell,_ _why not?_   With those huge hazel eyes and that tousled hair that looks like she’s just fallen out of someone’s bed, she’s a grown woman with the face of a Botticelli angel. It drifts across his mind that he must be spending too much time with James, if that’s the first comparison that occurs to him, but then her fingers find that spot deep in his lower back and he stops thinking altogether.

She pulls away for a moment to toss off her high heels. They bounce on the landing, thud all the way down the stairs, and he stares after them, feeling like more is tumbling down than their clothes.  He reaches for some modicum of sanity. Rational thought seems hard to find, impossible to articulate, but he has to say, “I don’t want to do something you’ll regret.”

She stills and gives him a crooked smile.

“Tomorrow I have to call my son and tell him his father and I have filed for divorce. I have to make an appointment with my lawyer about the settlement. Then I have to call Andrew and just hope that the child he’s taken up with doesn’t answer the phone.”

She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. He thinks, irrelevantly, that he’s never seen her without her three inch heels, and that she’s smaller than he’s imagined her. “I have ten thousand regrets right now. I assure you, anything that happens tonight won’t come near the top of the list.”

She looks up at him, hazel eyes glinting cat-like through heavy lashes.  

“I don’t want to think about it. Just for tonight,” she whispers, coming closer still, hooking her fingers into his belt in a gesture that’s somehow childlike and seductive all at once.

It’s a bad idea. It’s a phenomenally bad idea. He kisses her anyway.

* * *

Later, in the dark, they talk.

“She’s twenty-nine,” Jean whispers. “It’s been going on for three years. I didn’t have any idea.”

He tightens his arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer. Her hair is light as cobwebs on his lips.  

“I should have guessed,” she says. “He was away so often, and even when he was here, he wasn’t really _here_ , you know? I should have known. I think maybe a part of me did know.”

She nestles impossibly closer until they’re welded together from head to toe.

“There was a baby,” she whispers into the soft flesh of his throat. Robbie freezes, then his heart starts to thump uncomfortably fast.  She must be able to feel the sudden tension animating every muscle with instinctive fight-or-flight, but she continues inexorable. “About two years ago. I thought it was menopause, actually, until I started getting sick in the mornings. I saw my doctor, but I didn’t believe her when she said I was pregnant. Andrew and I hardly ever – and we weren’t trying – I’d gone off the pill because honestly, at my age, I never thought I’d need it. And then there was a baby.”

She doesn’t move, and her lips keep pressing the words into his skin. Branding him with knowledge he doesn’t want.  

“I got rid of it,” she confesses to his collarbone. “I never told him. Does that – does that shock you?”

Yes. No. Robbie doesn’t know. He only knows that in this moment he would do anything to take some of the terrible pain out of her voice. He squeezes her shoulder as tight as he dares.

“No, lass,” he says quietly, and presses a kiss to her hair. Perhaps it’s the darkness, perhaps it’s the intimacy of what they’ve just shared, perhaps it’s just because Jean Innocent is not quite the woman Robbie thought she was, but he finds himself speaking about things he thought he'd put to rest a decade or more ago. “We lost three between Lyn and Mark. One at seven months. All the time Val carried Mark we were waiting to lose him, and then the labour was something terrible. After that, we said we weren’t going to try for any more. Val wanted to, but I just couldn’t.”

He'd had a vasectomy, and never told her.  It's the only little lie of their marriage he doesn't regret. 

There’s a long silence. Then, “I’m sorry,” she whispers into his skin. “You must miss her.”

 _You must miss her_. Such a simple phrase, to describe such an overwhelming feeling.

“Aye,” he agrees. “That I do. But it was a long time ago. You get through it.”

She pulls back, blinks up at him. “Do you?”

Her hair falls into long curls across his chest. He combs his fingers through it, noticing for the first time the salt and pepper streaks running through the dark mane. “You do," he says as confidently as he can manage.  "In time. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you’ll be all right.”

She bites her lip. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to compare – I mean, it’s not the same.”

It’s the hesitation that gets to him. For all the things she is – clever, maddening, irritable, warm-hearted – Jean Innocent is never hesitant. He hates to see it.

“Grief’s grief. We all go through it one way or another.”

She looks at him very seriously for a long time, then leans down and presses her lips to his. It’s the lightest of kisses – experimental more than anything – but it warms Robbie through. He’s forgotten who’s comforting who as he tightens his arms around her lower back and pulls her close.    

They never do have tea.

* * *

James takes one look at him as soon as he walks into the office the next day and his eyes go wide.

“You didn’t,” he says flatly.

Robbie goes hot so fast it’s like someone’s holding a blow-torch to his skin.

He rubs the back of his neck and wonders what on earth he can say.

“Don’t say anything, would you?” he mumbles. “It’s going to be awkward enough without half the station nattering about it.”

James draws himself up to all of his considerable height and looks very offended.

“Of course not, sir,” he says coolly and Robbie curses himself. God, he’s offended the lad. He hadn’t meant to imply James was loose-lipped or a gossip, either, he’d just meant – Lord, he hardly knows what he’d meant.

“I know that,” he concedes. “I didn’t mean…look, lad, just ignore me, I’m all at sea today.”

Because he doesn’t do this. Robbie Lewis has never been the bloke who has one-night stands. And certainly not at his age, with a woman he respects a great deal, is more fond of than he’d ever realised, and happens to be his boss.

James eyes him warily. “All right.” He turns back to his computer. But his back stays stiff and his fingers keep drumming an anxious pattern on the desktop. It’s clear it’s not all right at all.

* * *

The departmental budget meeting is some kind of excruciating torture. Jean won’t look at him. James won’t stop looking between them. Robbie wants to sink through the floor. He’s not surprised when she cuts straight across Peterson’s presentation on increasing the budget for the drugs squad to say, “Yes, yes, very convincing, I’m sure, but I think we’d best save the rest of this for next week. You’ve all got crimes to solve.”

He’s desperate to escape, but of course he doesn't quite make it to the door before she says, “Lewis, a word.”

James gives him an indecipherable look and slips out. No comfort there, then.

They walk to her office in silence. She shuts the door with a firm click and takes a seat behind her desk. Robbie’s left standing on the other side, in much the same position he’s always in when she calls him onto the carpet.

“Oh, for god’s sake, sit down, Robbie,” she says, waving him into a chair with an irritated click of her fingers.

At least she sounds more like herself today. That’s something.

“Thank you,” he says, and hesitates. He’s about to tack ‘Ma’am’ on the end, but that doesn’t feel right now, after a night spent whispering ‘Jean’. But he can’t call her ‘Jean’ around the nick, and he’s never used her surname, and _Christ_ this is complicated.

Well, dipping into company ink and all that. There’s a reason they advise against it.

“About last night,” she says, and grinds to a halt, unaccustomedly tongue-tied.

They look at each other. Robbie wonders if the problem is that there’s nothing to say, or that there’s too much and nowhere to begin.

“I hope you don’t feel I took advantage,” Robbie says finally. In the cold light of day, he rather feels like he did.

She arches one eyebrow. “I hope _you_ don’t feel like _I_ took advantage,” she says sharply and she doesn’t have to say _sexual harassment_ and _workplace relations_ for him to know she’s thinking it.

It’s going to be like that then. He should have known she’d make this difficult. They look at each other, neither one giving an inch, neither one abnegating responsibility or offering absolution.

Checkmate.

“Let’s just pretend it never happened, will we?” she mutters eventually.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he agrees immediately and nearly chokes on the honorific.

He stands up to leave and his hand is actually on the door handle when he risks one glance backwards. She’s watching him, and there’s something warm and vulnerable and entirely unprofessional about the look in her eyes.

“Thank you, Robbie,” she murmurs, in the throaty voice he last heard in her bed. “It was – well, thank you.”

He knows what she’s trying to say. It was fantastic and foolish and heart-breaking and mind-blowing and, well, in the end it just _was_. Past tense.

The present is Inspector Lewis and Superintendent Innocent and the Thames Valley Police Code of Conduct.

“I’ll have an update on the Abbot case by the end of the day,” he promises her, and thinks, _thank you too_ , loudly and intensely in her general direction.

He hopes she can hear everything he doesn’t say. There won't be a time to say it out loud. 

* * *

“Pint, Hathaway?” he suggests. His sergeant’s been giving him odd half-glances all afternoon, and Robbie’s got a fair idea of what that’s about. Not that he’s got a clue how to handle it.

James looks up from his desk, surprised. “You don’t have other plans?” He puts the tiniest emphasis on ‘other’ to make it clear what he’s really asking.  

Robbie looks him dead in the eyes. “No,” he says firmly. “No, and I don’t think I ever will.”

He can actually see the tension bleed out of James’ body.

“All right,” he says finally, and reaches for his jacket. “But you’re buying.”

All the way out of the nick he can feel James giving him more of those little glances that speak volumes. But they’re from a library Robbie can’t access, in a language he can’t understand. He has no idea what James thinks about all this. More worrying still, he’s not sure _James_ knows what he thinks about it.

They walk out the station door and run – literally collide – into Jean. James apologizes stiffly, Jean looks mortified and Robbie’s body is suddenly suffused with heat. He knows instantly, terribly, that they can’t pretend it never happened.

This is going to get complicated.


End file.
